"One should not conclude too hastily that the degradation of American political practices is a decline in power. Behind this masquerade, there is a vast political strategy (certainly not deliberate; it would require too much intelligence) that belies our eternal democratic illusions."

- Jean Baudrillard

Quote:

Originally Posted by JMRouse

The bigger the conspiracy theory, the harder it would be to keep secret.

I agree as a general rule, but the Manhattan Project is the first example that comes to mind where enormous amounts of human and natural resources were put into a project that was largely able to be kept secret. As mentioned earlier, not everyone needs to know that they are a part of the "conspiracy":

"Operators at their calutron control panels at Y-12. Gladys Owens, the woman seated in the foreground, did not know what she had been involved with until seeing this photo in a public tour of the facility fifty years later" (source: http://smithdray1.net/angeltowns/or/go.htm)

And for those that knew what they were a part of:

I spend a fair bit of my spare time doing research in various topics of interest (historical, nutritional, literature, art... the internet is great!) and I've looked at a few conspiracy theories. Most are outlandish and some are market driven as mentioned earlier. Sort of like televangelism. But don't let the outlandish theories predispose you to dismissing more plausible explanations that may have a conspiratorial ring to them. They're sometimes true. For example, isn't it a well known cynicism that many offices in government are for sale to the highest bidder?

Unfortunately, corporate power is much more banal in its evil than a super secret Illuminati committee that performs occult rituals and has "ruled" since time immemorial. Operation PBSUCCESS? Yawn. Tell me more about this cabal of Jews, they have just the right amount of "otherness" to hold my attention.

Why didn't the Soviets ever go to the moon? Their rockets were better designed than ours.

Well, partly because their rockets weren't good enough. The Soviets did have superior designs previously, but they had fallen behind by the time the US developed the Saturn rockets for the Apollo program. There was a push to go to the moon in the Soviet Union but it ultimately failed due to a lack and misallocation of resources. One problem was that they were not able to develop a large and reliable enough rocket in time to beat the US. Incidentally, the Soyuz spacecraft still flying to the ISS today was part of the Soviet moon program, the equivalent of Apollo.

If you ever want to hear some truly sad/scary stuff, listen to old Russian recordings of between the ground crew and the manned missions. Sometimes they knew they were going to their death, and yet if they backed out, it would force the secondary crew to take their place. There are recordings online of doomed cosmonauts reentering earths orbit. And recordings of those who never did.